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For one group leader, program's guidance saved his family life
Joe Eulberg was a fun dad, his daughter Katie remembers.
When she was young, Eulberg would tell Tom Tomorrow stories about a fictional character named Tom and his family. Katie and her little brother would add details and characters as her father created the tales.
“When he told his stories, his face showed his enthusiasm,” Katie wrote in a high-school essay about her father. “His right eye looked slightly smaller than his left because of an old scar right above it.”
Yet despite his loving character, one of her first memories of her father is a violent one.
Eulberg always watched his two children on the weekends when his wife Barbara was working shifts as a nurse. He became frustrated when his two-year-old son wouldn’t brush his teeth, and, venting his frustration, Eulberg found himself hurling his four-year-old daughter across the room; luckily she landed on the bed.
“I will never forget this frightening image of my father, the man who is supposed to love me and tell me I’m a good person,” Katie wrote in the essay. “He was supposed to comfort me when someone hurt me, not be the one to hurt me.”
The violence, which in general was more aimed at his wife than the children, increased steadily in the household, until finally Barbara told him to go to RAVEN, a batterer-intervention program, or she would leave him.
“[My family] is part of my identity; I couldn’t stand the idea of losing them,” Eulberg said. “If I hadn’t gone to RAVEN, it wouldn’t have been an unlikely circumstance that I would have committed suicide.”
Although his first impression of RAVEN in 1990 was that of a dimly lit hallway smelling of cigarettes, the facilitators, who were running the program on a shoestring budget, were accepting of all the men who walked in.
They helped Eulberg see that what he did was horrible, but he didn’t have to be defined by his behavior, he said. They gave him the feeling that he was worth saving.
“When I went to RAVEN, it wasn’t a secret anymore,” Eulberg said. “The more I had to open up, the more relief I felt.”
One of the first things he learned was the definition of abuse: any action that one does to try and make another person do something. No matter what psychological trauma he faced in his childhood, it didn’t cause him to be violent — violence is a choice.
He also learned assertive ways to communicate his feelings, needs and wants. For instance, Eulberg now tells his wife, “When you say those things, it drives me crazy. I need us to find a different way to talk about this.”
He said everyone has the right to have his or her feelings heard. However, if the discussion is getting too heated, take a 20-minute time out, he said.
He also watches for warnings signs and triggers, such as a clenched fist or tight chest, which occurred right before he made a violent choice.
Eulberg ended up sticking with the RAVEN program for three years, mainly because he developed a community of friends who had gone through the same thing. About five years ago, he became a volunteer facilitator, who leads group discussions and uses his experience to help others understand the cycle of violence.
Eulberg has been free of physical violence for 18 years.
As a facilitator, he sees that RAVEN doesn’t change every man. “I know we don’t change some, and I know who they are when they leave,” he said. “But even if it’s only 10 percent, we’ve saved women from being abused. That’s enough to keep doing it.”
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